Research Areas
The members of the Ottawa-Carleton Institute for Physics affiliated to the University of Ottawa are engaged in research in the following fields:
CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS
Geochemical Physics of the Environment, High Pressure Physics, Microstructural Science, Novel Alloys, Polymer Physics, Soft Matter, Surface Physics
BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
Biomolecular Assemblies, Cellular biophysics, Medical biophotonics, Membrane biophysics, Nanofluidics, Neurophysics, Systems Biology
PHOTONICS
Laser applications, medical biophotonics, optical sensing, electrophotonics, fiber optics, laser-matter interaction, attosecond physics
OTHER
Astronomy
Condensed Matter Physics [Presentation - PDF]
- Geochemical Physics of the Environment
Characterization of geo-materials; environmental nanoparticles and processes (Denis G. Rancourt); lake sediment structure and evolution (Ivan L’Heureux, Denis G. Rancourt); nonlinear processes in geochemical systems; pattern formation in rocks and minerals; dynamics of magmatic flow (Ivan L’Heureux) - High Pressure Physics
Modeling of molecular systems under extreme conditions ; dense gas hydrates ; high pressure-high temperature synthesis of potentially ultra-hard materials; use of synchrotron radiation to probe materials (Serge Desgreniers) - Microstructural Science
Carbon nanotubes and nanotube devices; growth and optical properties of semiconductor nanostructures; Electronic and optical properties of semiconductor quantum dots; nano-spintronics with quantum dots; quantum information and computation; modeling of mechanical properties of materials; ab initio calculations (Sylvain Charbonneau, Kuiying Chen, Marie D'Iorio, Simon Fafard, Paul Finnie, Pawel Hawrylak, John Tse, Robin Williams) - Novel Alloys
Electronic and magnetic properties of quasicrystals, metallic glasses and complex crystalline alloys (Zbigniew M. Stadnik) - Polymer Physics
Theory of electrophoresis for conjugated and branched molecules ; micro- and nano-fluidic bioanalytical devices; theory and simulation of isolated polymer collisions; simulation of biofilm growth; diffusion on a lattice with obstacles (Gary W. Slater) - Soft Condensed Matter
Experimental and computational study of aging and dynamics in soft glassy materials (James Harden, Béla Joós); Microrheology of soft materials (James Harden); Highly entropic inhomogeneous materials and biological membranes; physical properties of these materials under stress (Béla Joós) - Surface Physics
Surface morphology of crystalline solids on the nanometer scale; kinetics of surface roughening and annealing; reaction kinetics on surfaces (Javier Giorgi, Peter Piercy)
Biological Physics [Presentation - PDF]
- Biomolecular Assemblies
Design of artificial proteins, synthesis of biomaterials, multiscale modeling of cell mechanics (James Harden) - Cellular biophysics
Cellular mechanical response using simultaneous optical and atomic force microscopy techniques (Andrew Pelling) - Medical biophotonics
Optical techniques for the non-invasive assessment of biological systems; optical models of the eye; monitoring of systemic diseases through the human eye (Réjean Munger) - Membrane biophysics
Bilayer rupture; mechanosensitive channels; vesicle dynamics (Béla Joós) - Nanofluidics
Micro and nano-fluidic bioanalytical devices; simulation of biofilm growth; neurochip devices (Christophe Py, Gary W. Slater) - Neurophysics
Information processing in the brain; nonlinear dynamics (André Longtin) - Systems Biology
Stochasticity in gene regulation; dynamics of regulatory networks (Mads Kaern)
Photonics [Presentation - PDF]
- Laser Applications
Frequency stabilized near-infrared lasers ; precision measurements (Andrzej Czajkowski) - Medical biophotonics
Optical techniques for the non-invasive assessment of biological systems; optical models of the eye; monitoring of systemic diseases through the human eye (Réjean Munger) - Optical Sensing
Theory and instrumentation for distributed fiber sensing of structural health properties in large infrastructures (Xiaoyi Bao , Liang Chen) - Electrophotonics
Fabrication of Bragg Gratings in Waveguides ; UV and ultrafast IR photosensitivity; phase mask design; Bragg grating structures; fused biconic tapered coupler devices; photonics and material sciences applications; photonic applications of quantum dots (Stephen Mihailov, Guenadi Rabinski, Sylvain Raymond, Henry Schriemer) - Fiber Optics
Fiber communication impairments ; Brillouin effect for optical routing; ultrafast fiber lasers (Xiaoyi Bao , Liang Chen, Ping Lu) - Laser Matter Interaction
Strong field atomic and molecular physics; laser processing of matter on sub-micron scale (Thomas Brabec , Ravi Bhardwaj, Lora Ramunno) - Attosecond Physics
Generation and measurement of ultra-short high intensity optical and electron pulse; molecular photonics (Thomas Brabec, Ravi Bhardwaj, Paul Corkum, Albert Stolow, David Villeneuve)
Other Field of Research
- Astronomy
Evolution of galaxies and their supermassive blackholes (Chris Willott)